My spouse is beautiful and sensible, a rare combination. In her opinion, this screaming neon blue machine (that at one point sported cow print seat covers) is, hands down, the greatest car she’s ever owned. So what if the competition involves Escorts, Centuries, and Impalas?

I met my wife in 2000, and we finally got married in 2005. In between, we lived 50 miles apart. Considering she worked a “mere” 20 miles from my house, she most often visited me; therefore, I was changing her engine oil every 6000 miles, six times a year!

In 2001, her 1991 Escort looked like a refugee from a Jason Statham movie; it was well ventilated from the usual Michigan rust, but the final nail in the coffin was provided by an 83- year-old in a Grand Marquis, who stated to the officer that my wife’s stationary car cut in front of him.

Enter the Crap-o-lier, as I called it. It actually wasn’t that bad for a then nine-year-old J-Body. It had obviously had some front end collision repair, and the pieces of busted windshield that danced from the defroster vents could not tell a lie, but it was rust free and drove nicely. It had (according to the odometer, and who knows if that thing was accurate or not) 55,000 miles on the venerable, power-filled 2.2 liter pushrod four.

No pampering here!

It ate through the cheap tires my wife bought (one set a year, give or take). It would warp a pair of brake rotors every 6,000 miles (I never did figure out why—the rear brakes were working fine, and I wasn’t the only one to perform brake jobs on it). Other than that, it was almost perfectly reliable. I flushed the cooling system twice and serviced the automatic transaxle once. I never touched the ball joints or tie rods. All was well in the world of cheap, small Chevrolets.

Until it hit 180,000 miles. She called me from work one day—it wouldn’t start. I showed up with my tools and dirty clothes and diagnosed a no-spark condition. Since all four cylinders were dead, I figured the ignition module was a dead player. Whoever decided on the location for that infernal piece of solid state electronics was a lifelong fan of sadism. It’s on the back of the block, only readily accessible from under the car.

That’s no fun in the parking lot of an art center.

Where are the cow print seat covers?

Needless to say, I got it running just in time for our nuptials. We moved in together, and that eye searing remnant of grunge era General Motors moved in to our new driveway. Five months later, I received a phone call asking if it was OK to drive the car home spewing a copious amount of steam from the tailpipe. I asked how far away she was…half way home was her response. I answered in the affirmative; go big or go home, I say.

At this point, I wished ours were new.

I hate the fact that cars often decide to mechanically fail on the coldest day of the year. I was out in my unheated garage in 15 degree weather pulling the head from the 187,000 mile Crap-o-lier. Not only was the head gasket blown, but the machine shop found a crack in the head, just a small one, but a small one is all it takes for you to become suddenly underwater in your 14-year-old compact.

A rear view Michelangelo would be proud of

Luckily, one of the local auto parts stores sold remanufactured heads for under $300. Sold! Another day in the garage and it was purring like a kitten.

Until it wasn’t. The next call informed me that the dashboard just lit up like your dog’s face when you get home from work. This time, after an $80 flatbed ride home, I diagnosed a bad belt tensioner, which undoubtedly couldn’t stand one more flex when I had removed the head. For those of you who have never worked on a Chevy 2.2, the tensioner was designed by the same person who placed the ignition module—the devil. I pretty much had to remove the front of the engine again to get it off.

Screaming power!

This was a week after I had replaced the cylinder head. I had had enough. I told my wife that this thing was going to become my worst enemy, and it was time to say goodbye. The door bottoms were separating from the inner doors, and selling it would just about cover what I’d put into it in the last month or two.

So we did, for $900. Considering that she paid $3000 for it five years earlier, it didn’t owe her a thing. She still talks about how great a car the Cavalier was, and the car we replaced it with was no dreamboat—a 2000 Buick Century with a smashed back bumper and a transmission that shifted like a Super Stock Belvedere, but only after you drove it for a half-hour or more.

We’re just too young for this right now!

At least the Century only had 99,000 miles on it, and I replaced and painted the back bumper that summer, but we dumped that beige “early-bird special on wheels” two years later, with 147,000 miles on it. It just couldn’t live up to the greatest of great ones, a 1992 Cavalier. Up until about two years ago, I still saw that Cavalier bombing around town, and it was even up for sale again at one point, for $700, with over 200,000 miles on it. I thought hard for about 30 seconds, ultimately deciding against it. After all, it was about 15 degrees outside at the time.

48 Comments

I look at these old Cavaliers now, and realize that back in their day, they weren’t all that bad. It appears to me that what made them “bad” was that their owners didn’t take care of them and drove them into the ground, and then complained what a piece of junk they were!

Certainly, the lack-of-care factor made many of these utter crapmobiles in their later years.

But I recall test-driving new cars in 1989. I wanted to spend $8-10k. The Cavalier was on my list, as was the Plymouth Sundance/Dodge Shadow and the Ford Tempo. The Cavalier felt the cheapest and worst screwed together of all of them, and I didn’t enjoy the butt-dragging driving position.

The Chevy salesman got me to test drive a Beretta, and it felt like twice the car compared to the Cav. Same 2L four, but otherwise a step up all around. I told him if he could get the price under my 10k ceiling I’d buy it. He did, and I did, and I drove it for 155,000 miles.

Having driven some almost new, and well maintained J-Cars, I can tell you that even at their best they were not all that good either.
My benchmarks were not super demanding at the time that I drove a borrowed 84ish Oldsmobile Firenza my main rides were a 77 Accord and a beat up Volvo 164 and the alternative to my girlfriend’s 88 Cavalier was my 84 Jetta.

Some cars catch all the bad luck or reputations. Camaros are for unrepentant high school dropouts who still wear mullets, Volvo owners are sophisticated and erudite and minivans are for people who have given up on life. Like someone further down the strings said, Cavaliers are white trash mobiles.

This generation of Cavalier had it bad. It had (depending upon which year) either a Chevy badged Isuzu or Toyota or a Geo badged Isuzu or Toyota below it, an N-body Beretta above and the new “wunderkind” Saturn coming in from the side. Not to mention it’s good looking cousin, the Sunbird. That’s a rather narrow box to fit in. Then there was all of the non-GM competition.

But as I said in the other string about the 3rd gen Cavalier, these were inexpensive cars that were usually treated poorly. But, if you believe these were the only rough and crude cars out there, you’re sadly mistaken. I was selling cars during this time frame, I drove all of the base level cars. The worst one by any measure was the base Corolla. No power, cement filled seats, handling by way of a shopping cart. They did get good fuel mileage.

But the sad fact is any of the base level cars are pretty basic. And many times they are purchased by credit challenged people who can barely make the payment, forget making maintenance intervals. I’d seen this plenty of times where we’d get someone into a base level Tercel. We’d see it six to 12 months later coming back on the repo man’s “hook”. Totally trashed and usually damaged, we got rid of them as fast as we could.

You know the old joke about “GM cars run badly longer than most cars run”? I believe it’s true! In my neck of the woods, we still see these old soldiers, rusted to hell, but plying the roads. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a 15 or 20 year old Corolla or Civic or Neon or Escort on the roads around here. (Wait, I DID see an Escort today. Outside the old folks condos…) Non- “big two” Japanese cars? VW Golfs? Gone. Most of them didn’t make the 10 year mark. I agree with Zackman’s comment about the folks running the things into the ground and then complaining that they were junk.

I actually like this generation a little better than the original, I liked the dash layout. It retained the boxy and roomy original body while softening the edges a bit. Plus the fact you could get the 3.1 V6 in the RS body if you knew which boxes to check. The Z24 was a little pricey for what it was, I would have rather had the Sunbird (with V6) at that point.

I get that lot of people had bad experiences with their GM cars. Ask me about my Trans Am sometime. Ask me about my second Aztek. I still have had better experiences with my GM cars than any others. Not that I don’t consider others, but I haven’t had much real incentive to change over.

I just spent a week driving my (to be) son-in-law’s Cruze Eco. Nearly bald tires, a six speed manual and a small turbo motor is a hoot in the snow. I’ve not spent a lot of seat time in the new(er) Delta body, but if they’re all like this, it’s a good harbinger of things to come.

Great post: no apologies necessary. As much as I dislike the ’91-’94 interiors, I totally forgot about the oddball V6 cars.

There’s a (factory) purple wagon running around with the 3.1 in it which I’d love to get ahold of. It didn’t even look like an RS model but it is so clean. I fear for its life as I do not like the looks of its current driver(s).

I’d love to have a 3.1 5-speed equipped sedan or wagon. Total sleeper.

Most Cavaliers of this vintage have disappeared from the roads in my area. They used to be everywhere. I know one person that owned a Z24 version. I honestly don’t know of any other vehicle that had as many problems as that Z24. The first engine eventually got so bad that they replaced it. The second one crapped out even more often. My 85hp ’91 Saturn would outrun that “V6 Monster”. Sad.

The friend in question was over for a visit one day while I was still living at home. My mother came home and followed a nice line of coolant on the road for about 4km from the edge of town to our driveway. Nasty car.

Back in 1985, I actually test-drove a Cav. I had ridden in a cousin’s 84-ish Type 10 with a 5 speed and was intrigued enough to give it a look see. A great big Chevy dealer in my area had precisely zero Type 10s with a stick. That’s the way to sell lots of sporty ones, apparently.

I got about 5 minutes into my test drive with the autobox before wondering just why the hell I was driving this thing. I remember absolutely nothing else about that car, other than that it felt like it weighed 3500 pounds. A really underwhelming experience.

Twenty-some years down the road, I can kinda sorta appreciate them for their dirt-simple backwardness. These seem to outnumber just about everything else on the road from their era, other than Corollas.

I’d say you got your monies worth out of that Cavalier, not to mention the Buick. If your wife loves Cavaliers perhaps you could find her one in good condition, at least you’re good at fixing them. What a nice Christmas Surprise

We had one bought in one of our desperate financial times. A program car – white with blue interior. The joke was that the RS trim level stood for “Red Stripe” as it seemed that every one had a red tape stripe. My wife loved it too but the motor mounts went bad pretty quickly and vibration at idle was terrible. Lots of plastic stuff broke or fell off but the car was pretty quick and the A/C was excellent. (That is quite important in Houston!) Much of the world really only needs about this much car what it really was – a “grocery getter”.

I am guessing that crack in the cylinder head was near the valves? It is a common issue on the 2.2l. Usually the headgasket itself blows in the front left corner(where a part of the gasket is exposed to the naked eye due to a shorter head configuration)

I got a 1990 Beretta while working at the local GM dealer years ago. It needed a headgasket and a head. It cost me $200 for the car and $500 for the head, headgasket, headbolts and push rods and rocker arms(the rocker arms wear and tent to knacker the ends of the rods). The car was good as new and I drove it for a few years before giving it to my brother.

I see you have the Cavi with the 1991 revised engine(multi port fuel injection). This was offered starting in 1991. The previous fuel injection was TBI and that setup made it easy to reach down at the top and replace the coil(I had to replace it twice). Yours has that big plenum in the way

The headgasket was leaking from the front left corner for a long time, but it blew into a cylinder (don’t remember which one). The crack was (I believe) inside one of the bosses for a bolt hole. It was a weird place to crack. I’m guessing I could have gotten away with reinstalling it, but I didn’t want to take the chance.

In the early 1990s, a family member owned a ’91 Dodge Shadow 2.2 litre 4 door. While another family member owned a ’92 Cavalier coupe with the 2.2 litre. When driven, the Shadow seemed more refined and gave a better quality feel. The Shadow went for over 330,000 kilometers and is at the AllPar 200,000 mile club. The Cavalier was sold much sooner. I appreciate that the Cavalier was based upon an 10 year year old platform, so this would be a factor. I remember in the early 90s, the Shadow/Sundance was generally getting better reviews than the Tempo/Topaz and Cavalier/Sunfire, by virtue of being a newer design most likely. I’ve read that for years that domestic subcompacts/compacts have not been profitable for the makers. So, this may partially explain the general lack of refinement and longer product cycles of the domestic subcompacts/compacts from this era.

It really makes you wonder what would have been different if GM had cared enough to make the styling and manufacturing changes to field a qualitatively competitive car that was just as durable. Instead, this was the period where they cheaped out on the interior, had a lackluster driving experience and was not even close to its competitors in styling.

I realized very quickly after owning several German cars and one Volvo, that you were paying for a vehicle from a manufacturer that decided to out thought into making them easy to maintain. You might have to remove a few items, which would make the task longer, but there was no reaching underneath and behind the engine to replace something that could potentially fail. GM clearly had the talent to do the same thing, they just chose not to. Shame.

A lot of these were scrapped with low mileage. Not because they were bad cars…but because the owners beat the pulp out of them.

I thought the ’91 makeover was a giant step backward though… The Z24 still looked nice to me on the outside, but the lesser models had a super-chintzy front bumper. Body-color bumpers on the RS models didn’t help much, especially when the poor car was ordered with the “just slap it on there” front license bracket.

The interiors & especially the dashboards went from classic GM to Playskool with those big goofy knobs and that square import-like Steering column with poorly placed earless ignition switch and Mongo oversize ignition key. Even the warning chimes went from the pleasant steady tone to the BONG BONG BONG BONG BOOOOOONG that just sounded “cheap” to my ears.

Door mounted seatbelts completed the interior assault and more than one of the ’91-’94 Cavaliers I owned had electrical issues related to that apparatus — some solenoid could be heard clicking in the doors occasionally when the car was turned off…. and I kept having battery drainage issues. I was going nuts between the random clicking in one or more of the doors…was it the malfunctioning automatic door locks or the seat belt solenoid?

It was such a shame because the 2.2 got multi-port FI in 1992 (I think) and was up to 110-120 horsepower or so. The transmission remained the faithful THM125 but the ancillary components seemed to have more problems… tensioners failed and many of the 2.2L engines had issues with the timing chain guide/tensioner/whatever-it-is.

I scrapped my last one, a ’94 VL a few months ago after I let it sit too long with old ethanol-laced fuel in it. A lot of it had to do with the prospects of hearing that BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONNNNNNNNNNNNG if I ever did get it running again.

My dad’s neighbor had a red V6 version of this Cavalier for almost a decade. It just keep going and going, all the way to 200K. He only got rid of it a couple of years ago due to a drunk rear ending him at a light. He replaced it with a new Focus, which he’ll probably keep another decade.

This generation of Cavalier is thin on the streets around Chicago. Probably due to rust. These tended to rust bad around here. I think that gets them before drive train issues.

J bodies have all but disappeared from the roads here then we get Cavaliers from Japan with Toyota badging. Horrid cars that break regularly not in the usual Toyota mould, engine out to do the waterpump yeah great design there not.

These were the cars that sealed GM’s fate. GM really should have gone back to the drawing board and come up with a truly competitive design that would allow them to retain customers, but nooooooooooooo, GM couldn’t do that. It was, in their business model, better to further decontent the car and sell in on financing and brand loyalty.

When I worked at GM, I dreaded driving a Cav. They were simply awful, rough, noisy, crude and gutless. The last ones were by far the worst, a new definition to the word, “crappy.”

Like all GM cars of the era, they start to shed things at 60,0001 km (or often before) and the car is going to be wallet intensive at 140,000 km. The GM store I worked at sold a gazillion of these, and they are all gone less than a decade later. I see plenty of Escorts of the era around, for example.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an Escort around here in Wisconsin; plenty of Cavaliers, though. Including the two I own, one of which I bought brand new and have now over 200,000 miles of reliable service. The only time it hasn’t started, despite being parked outside through many Wisconsin winters, is when the original battery died five years ago. Really crappy and cheap interior, but comfortable on long trips.

I always considered Cavs to be The Official Car of American White Trash. That said my late father (who was college educated and was anything but white trash) had one as his last car before his eyesight got so bad that he gave up driving. It was a ’91 wagon with a stick and he seemed quite happy with it. I drove it once. That’s all it took for me…

Why were the J-Bodies so inherently bad? I’ve had 2, and while I wasn’t doing backflips over them I don’t have the scorn that some of you guys do. It’s like an article of faith here that they sucked. Was it just the uber-plastic interiors or something else?

The Cavalier seems to be a love it or hate it car at best. I think most of the negativity is due to the engine design which was behind the curve right from the start in 1982. GM coaxed more power out of it over the years, but it was still a rough, crude, noisy engine. I’ve seen many blown head gaskets in Cavaliers and S10s at work, and even the cylinder head cracked in my mom’s 1995. Perhaps some of the Cavalier’s attrition can be attributed poor care, but I think the engine design is not as robust as it should have been. Even here in the Bay Area there are few Cavaliers plying the streets, but relatively plenty of Saturn S series cars from the same time period. At this point I don’t think these Saturns receive any better care, collectively. If only GM had made the effort to put a much better engineered engine in the Cavalier, we wouldn’t be here debating the merits of the car.

I have one of these engines in my S10, so I’m not slagging on someone else’s wheels.

I have two Cavalier memories. One, from 1982 when I was a young engineer, and a visiting sales rep had one of the first J-bodies as a rental. A bunch of us (engineers) actually went to the parking lot to check it out …. a modern, stylish, American FWD 4 cylinder with clean Euro-GM styling. The other, was my own rental of one in about 2005 or ’06, when I think it had already been discontinued. At the time I was doing a fair amount of business travel and had driven a variety of late-model American and Japanese subcompacts (and a few in Europe) and I could not believe what an all-around lame experience it was. A few months later I rented a Cobalt and it felt like a Lexus by comparison. I guess that’s what happens when you keep cars in production for nearly a quarter century. And the Cavalier was no 911 …. or even Jeep Cherokee.

I agree with previous posters comments. People buy a cheap new car that they can barely afford and do no maintenance on it and then complain when it breaks down on them. My Mom had a 1994 Pontiac Sunbird 2 door coupe in purple with the 3.1 V6 which she bought brand new and kept it until 2007. It was a very reliable car. It was also very peppy with the V6. The only issues she had with it was a water leak in the interior and the fuel gage stopped working around 2005, she never bothered to fix it just kept resetting the tachometer between fill ups. It had around 200,000 km on it when she traded it in on a Pontiac Wave – she wanted a smaller car and was bored of the Sunbird after 13 years.

We have had many J bodies in my working class family, and my mom’s current ride is a 2003 Sunfire. No they aren’t the most well made cars, but they have always been reliable for us. They were all bought gently used, and a lot of the people in my family are mechanically inclined so they lasted a while. You couldn’t kill our light blue 84 Cavalier wagon.

I’m a few days behind, but having a New Year’s Eve CC-catch-up-athon, so just got to this post and love how it’s written! Nicely done AARON65! Best line: “…the dashboard just lit up like your dog’s face when you get home from work.” Brilliant! 🙂